Page:The lives of celebrated travellers (Volume 1).djvu/142

 Crossing Mount Atlas, and proceeding directly towards the south, he entered the province of Segelmessa, extending from the town of Garselvin to the river Ziz, a length of about one hundred and twenty miles. Here commences that scarcity of water which is the curse of this part of Africa. Few or no inequalities in the surface of the ground, scanty traces of cultivation, human habitations occurring at wide intervals, and, in short, nothing to break the dreary uniformity of the scene but a few scattered date-palms waving their fanlike leaves over the brown desert, where at every step the foot was in danger of alighting upon a scorpion resting in the warm sand. The few streams which creep in winter over this miserable waste shrink away and disappear before the scorching rays of the summer sun, which penetrate the soil to a great depth, and pump up every particle of moisture as far as they reach. Nothing then remains to the inhabitants but a brackish kind of water, which they obtain from wells sunk extremely deep in the earth. Near the capital of this province, which is surrounded by strong walls, and said to have been founded by the Romans, Leo spent seven months; and except that the air was somewhat too humid in winter, found the place both salubrious and agreeable.

As he advanced farther into the desert, he daily became more and more of Pindar's opinion, that of all the elements water is the best,—the wells becoming fewer, and their produce more scanty. Many of these pits are lined round with the skins and bones of camels, in order to prevent the water from being absorbed by the sand, or choked up when the winds arise, and drive the finer particles in burning clouds over the desert. When this happens, however, nothing but certain death awaits the traveller, who is continually reminded of the fate which awaits him by observing scattered around upon the sand the bones of his predecessors, or their more recent bodies